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Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Republicans and the Palestinians

Sar Shalom

While there will be much discussion about the effects that the Republican takeover of the Senate will have on Palestinian negotiations with Israel, such as on this blog, a separate issue is how the Republicans are like the Palestinians. No, I am not suggesting that their policy platforms are similar. However, there mannerisms have a bit of overlap.

Both the Republicans and the Palestinians depend on people accepting their memes without question simply because every Very Serious Person talks as though they are obviously true. In the case of the Palestinians, the memes include the claims that Israel's settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and that Jordan's conquest of 1949 conferred an inalienable right upon them. In the case of the Republicans, the memes include the notion that out-of-control spending is what is holding back the economy and that both parties are equally intransigent about their bases' shibboleths.

Further, both the Palestinians and the Republicans profit by sitting pat and waiting for outsiders to punish their opposition for the "joint" failure to reach an agreement. In the case of the Palestinians, we see this in the Palestinians refusing to offer acceptable terms for Israel to allow a Palestinian state with the result of Sweden, joined by the British parliament, reacting to Israel's failure to reach an accord for a Palestinian state by recognizing a Palestinian state. In the case of the Republicans, the Republican Party adopted a strategy of withholding all support from whatever Obama proposed for the sole purpose of not allowing the label "bipartisan" to associated with the initiative and was rewarded by the voters' for the Democrats' failure to any agreements with them.

Now, is there any chance that we can convince the liberals who invariably take up the cause of the Palestinians, "You know, everything you say about the Republicans applies to the Palestinians as well," as well conservative minded voters, "You know, everything you say about the Palestinians applies to the Republicans as well?"

6 comments:

Yesterday Field Marshall Dear Leader Obama claimed victory and asserted that not only is everything going according to plan, he has no plan to change anything nor would he, in retrospect have changed anything before. It's as if the PLO was commanding the Titanic.

You know, everything you say about the Palestinians applies to the Democrats as well. The Republicans withheld support on issues that would take us farther down the road to European socialist ruin. But keep in mind, on his signature issue, Obamacare, there was not even a pretense of including Republicans in the process. And apparently, neither Obama, Pelosi, or any other legislater was included since they had no idea what was in the bill (Pelosi's admission, not mine).

"But keep in mind, on his signature issue, Obamacare, there was not even a pretense of including Republicans in the process."

Spare us your sophistry. The Democrats in the Senate writing the ACA went to Republican senator after Republican senator soliciting ideas to make it palatable. When time after time, whether it was Grassley, Collins, or whomever, the Democrats would incorporate the Republican suggestion into the bill and the response would be an unspecified "I still can't support that," it became clear that Republicans talking about the ACA was just a stalling tactic to prevent anything from ever happening. It was only at that point that the Democrats decided to pursue a partisan bill. Not to mention that what actually went in to the ACA was a grab bag of conservative proposals, as in they were first floated by the Heritage Foundation, from the 1990s.

"The Republicans withheld support on issues that would take us farther down the road to European socialist ruin."

Complete nonsense. The problems in Europe were exclusively in countries using the Euro and running TRADE deficits. Trade deficits have nothing to do with policies you call "socialism," let alone real socialism. For a definition of socialism, try looking at chapter 1 of The Road to Serfdom by Frederic Hayek.

The reality is that what this country is facing now is a shortage of spending. If you question that, just name one time in your life when you have earned a dollar that was not spent by someone. Households are not spending because their incomes plummeted. Businesses are not spending because households are not buying their goods and services. That leaves government to pick up the slack. And the Republicans will have you believe that the solution to the lack of spending is to cut spending.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish